Kevin Bronson on October 8th, 2016

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Jacques Planelles and Maryse Tridon are already better than $5,000 into their trip to Southern California, and the desert trippers, on holiday from Paris, don’t know where they’re staying tonight. “I think we’ll just drive into the country and pitch our tent,” says Planelles, 57, in an accent that would melt butter. “The cost? I can’t think about it right now because it would not be a good idea.”

They have come to the Empire Polo Club in Indio for Desert Trip, the three-night conflagration of icons featuring the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, Paul McCartney, Neil Young, Roger Waters and The Who. The Parisians stand beneath the “POLO” sign and survey the field, home to the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival but almost unrecognizable in this configuration. It is as if a temporary Colosseum sprang on the palm tree-lined field: two massive grandstands with luxury suites and elevators flanking a field of seated and standing areas, angled to view a massive stage with a semicircular video screen.

“Fantastic,” says Planelles, who plays guitar in a Beatles cover band and asks a local about music shops in Los Angeles where he can acquire some vintage gear. “Fantastic.” Well, except for the price of the beer Tridon is sipping. “Quatorze,” she says ruefully.

Friday night would end with an electric two-hour set from the Rolling Stones, and fireworks, as if 73-year-old Mick Jagger wasn’t firecracker enough, skipping and strutting and roostering and shimmying time and again out the runway and exhorting thousands of his closest friends to sing along with the hits. If the greybeards here came for nostalgia or out of some bucket-list imperative, they left with envy, not to mention a curiosity about how Jagger keeps his motor running.

From the lofty regions, the likes of Bill Gates, Cindy Crawford, Leonard DiCaprio and Rob Lowe watched. In the pit, sexagenarian Kevin Palermo of Westport, Conn., was seeing the Stones for the first time and had dressed the part: bandanna, scarf, rings, necklaces, billowing shirt, vintage jacket and print pants. As the Stones blasted off with “Start Me Up,” he was as buzzed and blissful as any kid you’d find in the Sahara Tent in April. “Fantastic,” he says.

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Randy Smallwood, 52, of Vancouver is something of a crazy man, who hear his wife and friends describe it. Or at least, a Pied Piper. He once booked a three-week kayaking trip to Antarctica without consulting anyone, then told his wife, “We’re going.” Same with Desert Trip. “I bought six tickets and then coerced everyone else to come,” he says, standing in the six-person Canadian contingent of tie dye-wearing friends, moments before Dylan begins. “This is … a lot bigger than we expected.”

Dylan’s set is all about context. Longtime followers of the 75-year-old singer-songwriter know he has a history of mumbling through his live performances, and recent concerts have concentrated on material from his 2015 and ’16 covers albums. So there is palpable energy when he kicked off his set with “Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35,” followed by “Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right,” “Highway 61 Revisited” and “It’s All Over Now Baby Blue” — all from the Sixties.

Later he manages a small smile or two during “Tangled Up in Blue,” and slithers and slurs his way through “Desolation Road,” but mostly it’s 1 hour 20 minutes of country-flavored blues that render all his masterful songs in the same, twangy dynamic. By the end it feels like a recital, and long before his six-piece band return for the encore “Masters of War,” the natives (read: people wearing T-shirts with the Stones’ iconic tongue logo) get restless.

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Desert Trip turned into a family outing for Javier and Mary Espinosa and their 26-year-old son Aaron. “This was all my idea,” the matriarch of the Santa Ana family says, waiting in line to get their photo taken in front of one of the huge replicas of the performers’ iconic album covers. “All this in one shot? What’s not like?”

Indeed, groups that bridged the generational divide are plentiful, yet the Coachella demographic could be spotted too. There were Marco Moreno and Alejandra Licarraga of Mexicali, both 30, who waited hours online before scoring tickets and were excited for “everybody.” Guillermo Mosa, 32, and Hermando Soares, 37, of Brazil waited four-plus hours online to get tickets and flew 13 hours to be here, eager because they don’t get much classic rock where they live. (They are not fans of Lollapalooza.)

A favorite, though, is the early twentysomething in a vintage Stones T-shirt, smirking at the prospect that he might actually get high with his mom. “She took me to my first concert when I was 11 years old, and it was the Stones,” he says, pointing at his shirt. “I’m excited that I might know some of the songs this time.”

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Oh, he would know plenty in the Stones’ set. It is chock full of the familiar, with Jagger and mates powering through two hours of mostly hits, the racehorse pace broken only by a quick wardrobe change or two, a Keith Richards cigarette break and a handful of songs from the ’80s, including two sung by Richards, “Slipping Away” and “Little T&A.”

The scope of the event is not lost on Jagger, who quips, “Tonight we said we’re not gonna do any age jokes, right? … But welcome to the Palm Springs retirement home for genteel English musicians.” (He also jokes that a trip to Cabazon might be in order: “We’re looking forward to seeing the dinosaur park.”)

If the sound of 75,000 or so voices singing along to “Wild Horses” isn’t thrilling enough, Jagger later cheekily says “We’re gonna try a cover of a song by a beat group” before launching into the John Lennon-penned Beatles classic “Come Together.”

Later, it is hit after hit after hit, with backup singer Sasha Allen enjoying a lights-out turn on “Gimme Shelter,” Jagger being bad on “Sympathy for the Devil” and the tandem of “Brown Sugar” and “Jumpin’ Jack Flash” closing the main set. For the encore, the USC Thornton Chamber Singers give “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” its heavenly choral tapestry, and the Stones close with “(I Can’t Get No Satisfaction)” as Jagger — unlike two-thirds of the crowd — shows no signs of flagging.

Then, fireworks, and why not? Like the Stones’ set, they are colorful, explosive and fun for all ages.

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Long before the slog through the dust back to the parking lot (and long before the denizens of Parking Lot 14B were busy calling their lawyers after being trapped for 2 hours after the show ended), the L.A. duo Moon Honey pinch themselves. “We didn’t get shows like this when we were living in Baton Rouge,” says guitarist Andrew Martin, who with partner Jessica Ramsey are all decked out as if they were ready to perform. “This is a mystical experience.”

Told that his sartorial sense recalled a certain guitarist who would take the stage very soon, Martin says, in mock seriousness: “I’m a huge Keith fan and I’ve always felt we have a mystical connection. So I’m hoping he sees me and decides it’s time to pass the torch.”

As they showed Friday at the first day of what nobody should call “Oldchella,” that torch still burns brightly.

Bob Dylan setlist: Rainy Day Woman #12 & 35, Don’t Think Twice It’s All Right, Highway 61 Revisited, It’s All Over Now Baby Blue, High Water (for Charley Patton), Simple Twist Of Fate, Early Roman Kings, Love Sick, Tangled Up In Blue, Lonesome Day Blues, Make You Feel My Love, Pay In Blood, Desolation Row, Soon After Midnight, Ballad of a Thin Man. Encore: Masters Of War

Rolling Stones setlist: Start Me Up, You Got Me Rocking, Ride ‘Em On Down, Mixed Emotions, Wild Horses, It’s Only Rock n’ Roll (But I Like It), Come Together, Tumbling Dice, Honky Tonk Women, Slipping Away, Little T&A, Midnight Rambler, Miss You, Gimme Shelter, Sympathy for the Devil, Brown Sugar, Jumpin’ Jack Flash. Encore: You Can’t Always Get What You Want, (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction